lloydarmbrust

Working in the Industry for over 10 years I can give you numerous examples where newspapers will risk sacrificing revenue to cover the news. I've seen the largest customer at a newspaper (a bank) in the news for months because their president embezzled funds.

It's why advertising departments and newsrooms are separated at a newspaper.

The truth is that running someone's print campaign and running their website is no different...

Most of our newspapers see new customers, and an on-whole margin increase of 10% annually.

Think of it this way, a small print ad costs $100 for one-time placement. Most real newspaper customers are the ones who can afford $10k-$100k per year.

For that same $100 monthly, we can give that customer a website, SEO, and social-media management--basically opening up a newspaper's customer base to a much wider audience.

BTW, we only do a revenue share, so that bunch-of-money is coming directly from new customers.

Yes. It's almost a smell test--if you can't get your team to move, are you really committed?

Newspapers have been subsidized by advertising for over 100 years, why are we trying to make money from subscriptions now?

"Here's the real issue with Patch: They're selling a branding advertising campaign to small businesses that should never put their first dollar in that bucket. It should be on Google AdWords, where it's measurable and it's cost effective, whether it's a Groupon or AdWords type play."

This makes sense. I've been in the newspaper game for more than 10 years, and I couldn't sell a banner ad to an SMB with a straight face because it's not what they need.

What a small business needs is search-engine optimized website with social media hooks. Banner ads are a waste of cash... the ROI is not there.

That is interesting. Most of our investors (including VCs) recognize Austin as a startup hub. We have several VCs, a lot of angels, and two accelerator programs.

Interesting that Austin is left out. I would put Austin before Boulder and after NY... but I am bias I guess.

Yeah, farmers are really good about adopting this technology because they have to--the competition is fierce in farming and the industry is constantly challenged to do more with less.

Contrast that to the tire shop who fixes the farmers' tires, or the local florist and they will likely not have a computer in their store.

We're not going after farmers (yet) since they don't need websites or lead generation; however, the other businesses in their communities do.

Fixed. Thanks.

We knew that Seeing Interactive didn't say anything about us, so we started searching for a name that really spoke to what we were doing.

In looking through a lot of our internal documents and wiki we found the phrase "own local" a lot--as in, we want to help newspapers own their local markets again. We were hooked and began negotiations for the domain name immediately.

Exactly. We want to commoditize this industry.

Brilliant.

Thanks for the profile BTW! How did you find out about us? My RSS scanner picked up the article and I e-mailed all of our top guys at the company asking who made this article happen--we still don't know, but it's one of the best write-ups we've had.

BTW, you can apply here: http://seeinginteractive.com/company/jobs/hacker-interns/

Okay Okay, Austin area. The plan is to move downtown once we've figured out how big of a place we need--right now we're growing at 200% every three months so we need that to level out first as everyone wants a five year lease.

Feel free to hit me up (lloyd@seeinginteractive.com) or stop by our office in Pflugerville.

NV too.

Not really. The investors like it because we save a bunch of money. And the founders are both from the Midwest so we like it. Actually, we're a Texas-based company (maybe the only YC company that's not a DE corporation) and have always planned to have this be our base of operations.

Yes really. No state income tax.

Took Christmas day off and worked the rest, but most of the staff was able to be off for about two weeks surrounding Christmas. Everyone should be back to work Monday.

I read. Very well written.

"You need people on the ground." -- That's exactly why we have yet to sell this directly to consumers. We partner with newspapers who have the relationships in place, and the boots on the ground, to make the sale.

This last leg of the internet sale is not going to happen over the phone, it's going to have in person, and probably with someone the business trusts.

+1

Ha. Very clever.

This is great stuff. We should start a former-YC-company consulting arm :)

I couldn't agree more.

Trust me, we have way more examples than this.

The truth is that we do not sell directly to SMBs. We work through local newspapers and they sell using their brand. If you called any of our SMB customers, they probably have never heard the name "Seeing Interactive"--which is how we can get away with using such a terrible name. :)

It works a lot faster than you might think. Sure, if you're setting up a new site in San Francisco or Austin this kind of thing will be a much harder sell. But in small-town USA where no one knows what SEO means, it's actually really fast.

We've had people jump to #1, #2, and #3, of target keywords in under a week (we don't advertise this, btw, because it's unrealistic), but 30-45 days is very common.

There are millions of businesses in markets less than 25k people, and those people are our targets.

Counter point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2035316

Haha, maybe true. But we posted this blog from inside the 63rd largest newspaper in the country which is launching our services tomorrow. I suspect that they choose our company precisely because we're not afraid to try new things.

You sound like a newspaper publisher.

Exactly. That's what we're fighting against.